







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 6 (1): 137-142, January 2023 

 

BOOK REVIEW 

A SINKing Feeling: New Insights into the Himalaya’s 

Pressing Environmental Issues 

Ruth Gamble 

Jayanta Bandyopadhyay and Sayanangshu Modak, Governing the ‘Water Tower 

of Asia’: The Case for a System of Integrated Knowledge for the Hindu Kush Himalaya, 

March 2022, Observer Research Foundation 
 

This vital work by 

Bandhopadhyay and Modak 

(2022) addresses one of the 

most compelling dilemmas of 

our time: how do we conserve 

rivers now that they are 

stressed by climate change and 

growing human need for 

freshwater? It considers what is 

arguably the globe’s most 

important hydrological 

system—the 10 rivers that flow 

from the Hindu Kush 

Himalaya (HKH). The book 

explains that at least 2 billion 

people live in these basins, 

distinguished by a highland–

lowland divide. The river 

systems are formed in 

ecologically fragile and complex 

 
 La Trobe University, Melbourne, R.Gamble@latrobe.edu.au  

Copyright © Gamble 2023. Released under Creative Commons Attribution © 

NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 

Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web).  

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v6i1.871  

mailto:R.Gamble@latrobe.edu.au
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v6i1.871


 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [138] 

 

highlands before descending to densely populated foothills and plains 

where “poverty reduction is a priority” (10). Most of these rivers are fed by 

snow/ice melt and monsoonal climate systems that create high seasonal 

flow divergences. These complex river systems are made even more 

administratively burdensome by the national borders that transect the 

basins. They flow through 16 nation-states, and 8 of the 10 rivers require 

international governance. 

Bandyopadhyay and Modak demonstrate that the governance of these rivers 

has operated on a “reductionist paradigm” (104) that has not served the 

rivers or the humans residing around them. They propose a compelling new 

approach to this governance called the system of integrated knowledge 

(SINK). Unlike earlier water governance systems, it includes a governance 

model and the scholarship, policy, and community processes through which 

this model could be implemented. 

SINK begins with the notion that “nature organises itself in a systematic 

and integrated manner” (9) but argues that river governance has been 

predominantly reductionist, and that this has interrupted nature’s systems. 

The creation of multiple knowledge silos has caused this reductionism 

through single-discipline, time-bound research projects and an over-reliance 

on engineering solutions. For rivers to thrive, they need to be governed 

holistically, requiring “integrated knowledge” based on a more 

comprehensive, multi-disciplinary array of inputs. 

Furthermore, this integrated knowledge needs to be implemented. As the 

authors point out, water management theory has promoted the Integrated 

Water Resource Management (IWRM) approach since the 1990s; it seeks to 

avoid “resource challenges from escalating into crises” (6). However, as it 

operates from a crisis avoidance perspective, it has ultimately become a 

means to gain funding rather than to help rivers and has not been widely 

utilized by governments (26–28). SINK is “a framework for bringing 

IWRM closer to practice” (6) through primary, secondary, and tertiary 

knowledge integration. The primary level integrates similar research 

disciplines; the secondary level integrates less similar and non-scholarly 

indigenous and local knowledge systems; the tertiary level integrates 

previous knowledge into water governance through the efforts of experts, 

policymakers, and civil society. “Water governance experts”, they say, 

“should manage the integrated and inclusive knowledge through a model of 

a ‘knowledge pyramid’: the most consolidated and synthesised knowledge is 

at the top – often characterised as wisdom” (9). 



[139] Gamble 

 

The authors’ use of the extensive HKH river system enables them to 

stretch the case for holistic river governance from the interdisciplinary and 

integrated stakeholder level to the inter-basin and international level. They 

argue that this large area has shared issues such as high monsoon flows, 

disputes over access to water, and water-scarce periods that would be best 

approached through transnational cooperation rather than nationalist 

frameworks. This would require a series of transnational studies that fill in 

the many data holes that uneven research funding and water governance 

approaches have created. It would also require the recognition of each 

basin’s “unique characteristics in terms of meteorological, hydrological, 

political and ecological features” (12). 

Bandyopadhyay and Modak systematically lay out the theory and practice of 

SINK through an introduction, a literature review, an overview of the 10 

HKH basins, and a chapter entitled “The Case for SINK”. Their 

introduction offers a brief overview of the HKH region and its river basins’ 

geographies, cultures, and economies. It describes the basins’ relationships 

to inner Asia’s mountain ranges and plateaus, and how these mountains 

have influenced atmospheric circulations and precipitation. In this and 

other parts of the work, the book’s graphics and imagery are excellent and 

greatly help readers understand this complex topic. The authors show the 

relationship between the region’s three dominant weather systems—the 

westerlies and the east and south Asian summer monsoons—and how the 

mountains’ rain shadows direct precipitation. The introduction explains 

how the region’s hydrological system has “extended vital ecosystem services 

to support life, in general, and in particular, the human communities” (10) 

in the mountains and on the lower basins’ vast plains.  

Their review of previous literature provides an overview of IWRM and its 

limited uses and abuses. It then highlights four ideas circulating in global 

“post-IWRM” (27) discussions about water governance that would be 

helpful in HKH water governance: (1) a focus on the initial motivations for 

integration; (2) a critical examination and assessment of the processes and 

sub-processes that generate integrated knowledge; (3) an examination of the 

factors that bind water governance elements together; and (4) the creation 

of the scope to apply knowledge to diverse and complex situations. They 

conclude this chapter by outlining research areas wherein knowledge needs 

to be integrated: (1) knowledge of the earth’s surface; (2) knowledge and 

perception of flows in rivers; and (3) knowledge of science, society, and 

governance.  



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [140] 

 

The overview of the 10 HKH river basins describes each basin’s 

physiography, socio-cultural milieu, and the challenges associated with 

integrated governance. This excellent outline could stand by itself as a 

reference for basin comparison. After identifying each basin’s common and 

unique issues, the authors make a key and detailed argument in the last 

chapter, “The Case for SINK”. This chapter explains that SINK is a 

“framework for research, education and communication programmes for 

creating a new community of professionals and policymakers who are better 

equipped for initiating and sustaining new governance processes” (104). As 

noted earlier, Bandyopadhyay and Modak argue that this integration needs 

to be approached at three levels: primary (close-disciplinary), secondary 

(trans-disciplinary and indigenous/local knowledge systems), and tertiary 

(between these systems and governance). As they explain, this approach will 

allow “experiential as well as experienced learning that will act as feedback 

to fine-tune the integrations at the lower levels” (109). Their approach 

envisions a system in which research, local experiences, and governance 

expertise inform each other, and each group adjusts its practice as a result.  

The chapter outlines how this integrated approach, and the fine-tuning 

feedback it prompts, will address what they see as the eight core challenges 

for the HKH river basins: (1) addressing water-related hazards, (2) sediment 

management, (3) the conservation and use of aquatic diversity, (4) water 

quality recovery, (5) transboundary cooperation and conflict resolution, (6) 

the hydropower dilemma, (7) the promotion of desired land use and 

economic activities, and (8) the institutional process for the adoption of 

payment for ecosystems services. As with the overview of the basins that 

preceded it, the authors’ succinct and insightful overview of these issues is 

immensely helpful for appreciating HKH rivers’ multiple large-scale 

dilemmas. 

The central premise of the work is compelling, and the related issues within 

the text, and the authors’ approach that the following few paragraphs 

identify, enforce this main argument. They emphasize the need to work 

across disciplines and, more importantly, to work with local and indigenous 

communities in the highlands and lowlands.  

Along with its many strengths, the text also has several minor faults and a 

main drawback. The minor faults include several geographic and historical 

mistakes. The authors say that the “eastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan 

plateau” is “west of Pamir and Tien Shan mountains” (16), while the entire 

plateau is east of these mountains. The unclear use of the term “n/a” in the 

tables makes it seem like there is no agriculture in China’s section of the 



[141] Gamble 

 

Brahmaputra basin (64), when large areas of it are irrigated (Li et al. 2017). 

Their use of the term “social sciences” is vague and seems to include 

humanities, law, and social science subjects (108). They represent nationalist 

rhetoric as history in some of their historical readings. An example of this is 

the idea that Great Yu is a historical figure (39) and that ancient China’s 

approach to water was balanced (41), when evidence suggests that humans 

had already changed the rivers’ hydrology in 500 BCE (Kidder and Zhuang 

2015). The authors claim that the Nepali name Sagarmatha is older than the 

English name for the mountain, Everest (15), without acknowledging the 

controversy around the mountain’s Nepali name. The mountain’s only 

long-standing pre-colonization name was its Tibetan/Sherpa name, 

Chomolungma. 

The proposal’s main drawback is its approach to local and indigenous 

knowledge systems. On one hand, this work insists that SINK should 

include “other disciplinary knowledge systems, including 

indigenous/local/traditional knowledge” (9), and praises these systems as 

being “highly diverse and adaptive” (106). On the other, it suggests that 

they are not “formal knowledge entities” (106), thus suggesting that only 

university knowledge systems are formal. It also assumes that locals “have 

limited exposure to the formal knowledge systems” (106), which, given the 

previous assumption, suggests that they do not have a university education; 

this is a sweeping generalization. 

Rather than problematizing the relationship between large nation-states and 

their often highland minorities and asking whether environmental justice 

issues can be included in river management—for instance, by assigning 

water sovereignty provisions for these groups—the work sidesteps the 

contentious issue of sovereignty. The authors’ only acknowledgment of the 

region’s multiple nations is oblique and reproduces several of the 

problematic majoritarian stereotypes about them. It describes them as 

objects of study—of “social anthropological importance” rather than as 

autonomous subjects. And it problematises their multiplicity, stating that 

“the same diversity can be a cause for potential conflicts over the products 

and services of the natural environment, including river flows” (13). Such 

an approach naturalizes the status-quo, nation-state-led, extractive approach 

to the rivers’ headwaters and ignores the rivers’ multiple forms of 

sovereignty. The “potential conflicts'' over the rivers will be resolved only 

by addressing this issue.  

These criticisms of facts and focus are not merely scholastic pedanticism. 

They reflect the integration to which SINK aspires and the basins require. 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [142] 

 

As the authors suggest, to live with the rivers, we must grapple with issues 

not usually regarded as water governance. This includes minoritization and 

local indigenous sovereignty. Let us hope everyone is prepared for the 

challenges SINK advocates because it is necessary for the sake of the rivers 

and humanity. 

 

REFERENCES 

Bandyopadhyay, Jayanta and Sayanangshu Modak. 2022. Governing the ‘Water Tower of 

Asia’: The Case for a System of Integrated Knowledge for the Hindu Kush Himalaya. 

Observer Research Foundation. 

Li, Shicheng, Zhaofeng Wang, and Yili Zhang. 2017. “Crop Cover Reconstruction 

and Its Effects on Sediment Retention in the Tibetan Plateau for 1900–

2000.” Journal of Geographical Sciences 27 (7): 786–800. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-017-1406-4  

Kidder, Tristram R, and Yijie Zhuang. 2015. “Anthropocene Archaeology of the 

Yellow River, China, 5000–2000 BP.” Holocene 25 (10): 1627–1639. 

https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683615594469  

 

 

 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-017-1406-4
https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683615594469

